When This You See
by Insomniac Owl
Summary: Escaping from an experimental research hospital run by his father, Gaara meets someone who can help. AU.


**When This You See**

_By Insomniac Owl_

-

The only things Gaara knows of the world are what he's learned from newspapers and novels, and bits of conversations overheard in the hallways. It's an incomplete picture, dominated by wives and children and violent crimes, but even at its worst that world is, Gaara thinks, a better place than the research labs. He's been spared the most gruesome procedures; mostly he just swallows drugs and gives blood samples, but the drugs....

It's because of the drugs, Gaara knows, that he hasn't slept well for the past sixteen years. He's either in so much pain he can't sleep, or the drugs just won't let him, and no one will do a thing about it. On particularly bad days he goes to bed afraid they've given him sedatives, terrified he'll wake to find his body torn apart, a purple T-shaped wound pulled together across his chest, something inside him removed and Gaara unable to tell what, exactly, is missing.

"You're helping advance medicine," his uncle tells him on the rare occasions that he visits. "What we learn from you… your mother's death won't be in vain. Because of you, something might come of it – do you understand that? Do you understand why I have to do this?"

But Gaara doesn't know his mother, and can't care about a woman he's never met. He'd like to say this, but he knows what his uncle's reaction would be: head down, hands clenched, an explosion. You don't know anything. Shut up. Do you know what she gave up for you? Do you know, do you know?

So he doesn't say anything.

**x**

It's winter, and the air smells like hospitals. It's a smell he'd gotten used to, like he's gotten used to the sound of rubber shoes squeaking against the linoleum, and the rattle of trolleys down the hallway. It is all he knows. He doesn't know the sound of wind through the trees, or the feel of sand between his toes; he doesn't even know what these things are. Though he's heard about them in novels there is nothing concrete to attach them to, so they remain disconnected ideas, floating through his thoughts when night comes and he can't sleep.

He tries to match the images in his head to things he can see and hear, but it's never a good fit. Finding the sound of wind moving through tree branches in the rustling of lab coats, and a forge in the clink of metal as nurses prep for surgery, he knows there is something essentially wrong in these comparisons, though he can't say exactly what. The sounds don't quite satisfy him, no matter how he squeezes his eyes shut, or whispers "_Please please please please please_" into his pillow.

This is partially – but only partially – why Gaara feels he has to leave. He needs to experience the world for himself, needs to know something other than white walls and the smell of disinfectant. Needs something other than pain. He's not afraid anymore, just resigned, but no strength of will can stop the pain.

But the real reason he decides to leave is more concrete.

He wakes up one morning – a Monday, because the nurses on shift had changed – to find that the girl across the hallway has vanished. Standing there in the white glare of fluorescents, seeing her empty bed across the hall, he knows. They've killed her. This isn't the first time someone has disappeared in the middle of the night, never to return, but for whatever reason it hurts him, this time. He sees her organs in neatly-labeled jars, her blood parceled out to twenty different labs, and the parts of her body they can't test burned, or dissolved in acid.

Gaara is sick, that morning, and spends ten minutes in solitary confinement while they mop his floor. There Gaara begins to fear and Gaara begins to hate, and it's a relief to feel something other than resignation.

**x**

It's impossibly easy, getting out. He says he has to go to the bathroom, and once he's there he lifts himself out the window. As he walks toward the gate his heart swells in his chest, but he keeps his strides even, keeps his breathing shallow, keeps his face straight and neutral. He's wearing the sweats and t-shirt they issue everyone at the hospital, but it's not a hospital gown and he could be a teenager out for a jog; he could be anyone. The guards never go inside. They won't know.

He makes it out the gate, heart fluttering like a caught bird, without a word from either of the guards. A block or so later he hears the shouts. Though he can't hear what's being said he knows, instinctively, that it's about him – and then a car engine roars to life. Cold dread rushes through him, and he breaks into a run.

He's not used to darkness like this, and he isn't used to the feel of dirt and concrete underfoot. Rough objects cut at his ankles; dead grass stabs at the tender soles of his feet; and he runs, and runs, and runs, lungs burning for air before he's gone more than a quarter of a mile. He's not used to running, either, but eventually the shouts die away, and the world grows quiet, and all he can hear is his own breathing and his heels pounding against the concrete.

Eventually he stops, thin chest heaving and one hand pressed against his ribcage. He's in a different area of town, where the buildings are grey and black and the moon glints white against the windows. It's quiet. He pauses for a moment, leaning with one hand against a wall, and not a moment later a man in a black, fur-trimmed coat steps out of the shadows. It's like something out of a novel, he thinks blindly. It's like something out of a spy novel. He turns to run again, only to find that the man has stepped around him, catching Gaara's arm in a cool, long-fingered hand.

"Calm down," the man says, reaching up to adjust his hood. "I want to help."

Gaara's instinctive thought is that the man is from the hospital, that he's there to take him back. He struggles, pressing bruises into his wrists, but the man is stronger, and there's nothing Gaara can do but sag back against the wall, his eyes bright and hateful.

"You calm?" the man asks, after a long moment of silence. "I said I want to help."

"Who are you?" Gaara asks.

"A friend, I suppose."

"I don't have any of those." As they stand there, Gaara begins to suspect that the man is not, in fact, there to take him back to the hospital. His face is rougher than any of the doctors', and he's taller, and his clothes are dark and messy - but neither does he look like any of the civilians Gaara's seen. There's something confident in his stance, and the hands clasping Gaara's arms are strong.

After a long moment, the man releases him and resettles his coat around his shoulders. "Shukaku," he says, bowing formally. Gaara knows this is how things are done only because of the books he's read, and he mimics the gesture.

"Gaara." The normalcy of the introduction settles him, and all the fear rushes out of his body, leaving him trembling. "I'm sorry," he says, "I'm not very good at –"

Shukaku waves a hand, teeth bared in what is supposed to be a smile. "Don't worry about it," he says. "Manners are the last thing I care about."

Gaara doesn't know what to make of this. He doesn't know what to think, either, when Shukaku leans in close, putting an arm around his shoulder. It's warm, but the palm of his hand, which comes to rest flat against Gaara's collarbone, is cool.

"It's a shame," Shukaku says suddenly, "what they did to you."

"What?"

It's cold out, Gaara notices. He's wearing the sweats and t-shirt they gave him at the hospital, but the thin fabric is meant to be worn indoors, not outside in forty degree weather. He shivers, once.

"Tell me what you want," Shukaku says quietly.

"I… What?"

"I said, 'what do you want, Gaara?'"

Gaara pauses, reaching into his memories for old desires. These are the things he brings out for Shukaku, these quiet, secret wishes: to press tree bark patterns into his palms; to taste salt water; to see butterflies and deer in the wild. "I want to see the ocean," Gaara says. "I want to hear the wind in the trees, and know what silk feels like, and I want to eat datemaki and octopus and –"

"Really?" Shukaku's voice is flat and unamused. "Such childish, superficial things, Gaara? You would forgive sixteen years of suffering because you've heard the wind move through the trees?"

"I never said that; I -"

"What do you _really_ want?" Shukaku asks, leaning in close. He smells like sand and old blood, and his coat is ragged at the edges, but his skin is soft and his eyes cruel in a way Gaara loves, wants more of.

Somewhere in the distance, a dog barks. Nearby: the din of raccoons clambering over garbage can lids.

By the time Gaara speaks something has risen up inside his chest, pushing the words out so fast he stumbles over a few of them. This is the truth. "I want to kill them," he says, "the people at that hospital. I want them to suffer like they made me suffer. I want to kill my uncle, for loving his sister so much that he was willing to kill me to prove it, and I want to kill my father, for not loving anybody."

He falls silent, trying to catch his breath, and feels Shukaku's hands moving slowly, deliberately, to rest on his shoulders. Shukaku's eyes are bright and his smile wide, and his laughter fills those long, dark streets like a premonition.

"That, Gaara," he says, "_that_ I can make happen."

**end.**


End file.
